After a fourteen month break it’s time to take a look back at the extraordinary change that’s happened over this time. My last words were an epitaph for the wasted and destructive years of the George W Bush regime and now he, his party, and especially his cronies of the Eastern Establishment Republicans, have been un-ceremoniously elbowed out of the public sphere in disgrace. And, with so many squandered opportunities wasted, good riddance!
A new man, with a new skin color for the White House, will take up residence in about 3 weeks and that’s a good thing. Much good may come from this, or he may turn out to be mediocre to poor but his starting team does look spectacularly superb and he’s disappointing all the right fringe groups so far.
Things are looking good but Obama has a tough job ahead of him, possibly the toughest of any President since FD Roosevelt.
Aside from this and any Cassandra impulses that crop up in conversations, the meaning of Barack seems to be two-fold: what it means already, and what it will mean at the end. What it means already is simply the USA has elected a Democrat, a black man, and a black man with the middle name “Hussein” all in 2008. Amazing.
Some feel he won on the back of Republican incompetence, McCainian incompetence or due to sympathy vote on behalf of his race. These are patently specious arguments. Pathetic, even. Yes Republicans were on the back foot, but this was a self-inflicted wound and tough shit. They’re big boys and girls so if they screwed it up for themselves, tough! Yes McCain made mistakes; most of them pale besides Palin (yes, that’s a very bad joke but it’s my bad joke) but no other Republican in the known universe could’ve given Obama a run for the vote like McCain did. He did his best; perhaps next time the Republican party will pull its finger out and support their candidate a bit more enthusiastically (especially the Pharasaic christian-Right Taliban - Palin was your fault and she probably lost it for you!).
But never mind the Republicans, they were tired and hopeless a year ago and, as said, anyone other than McCain would’ve suffered a McGovernesque landslide defeat. They were easy. The real fight for the White House was the stand-up bloodletting between Obama and Hillary. Barack Obama defeated what is arguably the strongest political establishment of the past 20 years - the Clintons - and did so with dignity. That’s something utterly amazing. He may think Hillary is spawn of the devil but he never, ever let a hint of that go public and huge kudos to him for it. After the past eight years it’s time the White House got a taste of dignity and statesmanship back around it.
But the American people elected a democrat in the midst of two intense land wars that were launched by a Republican, and he defeated the war-hero Republican candidate in doing so. Perhaps this will really, actually mean change - change away from the atavistic left/right politics that have dominated the USA since Nixon.
The USA elected a black man, too. My friends in Europe feel they’ve fallen into a parallel universe thinking that would never be possible for at least another hundred years or so. The Germans and British have had female leaders and the French have a son of immigrants from Eastern Europe but the USA elected a black man only 40 years after people were killed for their stance on civil rights for black people (and others). Britain has no one on the horizon that could be in a similar position; Germany has no one Turkish or African that stands a chance of leading the CDU or SPD (and that will almost certainly never happen for the CSU in Bavaria). Italy? Holland? Belgium? Spain? One of the Scandinavians? Not a chance. So Europe: pot and kettle, yeah?!?
The third bit of the meaning of Barack so far is that his middle name is “Hussein”. Just like King Hussein, the (relatively) enlightened King of Jordan, who recently died; just like Saddam, who was recently executed; just like the grandson of Muhammad who fell at Kerbala, whose followers became the Shia and still mourn him yearly. So what’s in a name? We aren’t bronze age ancients who believe knowing someone’s name gives us power over them and we aren’t Iron Age Victorians or Ottomans or eugenicists who believe character traits are hard-wired in with the breeding and your name states your place in society which you need to know and keep. It’s a post-modern world out there but symbolically there is a message there. It says that for fifteen percent (or so) of the world’s population the Americans don’t think you’re wrong because you have an Arabic or Muslim name and that you don’t have to be from a dynastic, rich white elite to become President of the USA. None of this will solve the problems between the USA and the Muslim world and won’t solve the problems of the Middle East or anywhere else but it creates a space of understanding that resonates with all the good things - opportunity, liberty, equality - that people from elsewhere want to believe America means; it’s a small gesture from the entire electorate that says we’re going to try something different and that we learn from mistakes. Whether we’ll successfully implement a new strategy is something else - that’s to do with the second part of what Barack means and we won’t know that for some time.
But for the moment we’ll soak in the euphoria and feel really great about being American at a time of renewal and re-invention. For the first time in a long time I feel I can be openly proud about being an American abroad without expecting a torrent of invective for it. Nice!
